Enchanted Heart (7 page)

Immediately, she regretted confiding in this stranger her anger at Elias for enlisting, but she was relieved when he continued interrogating her.

“But, you don’t hate him now,” Caid’s question was more like a statement.

Marty shook her head and stared at her hands, which she had pulled from the confines of her skirt, before she answered, “No. I loved my husband and I understand now why he had to go.”

Then she busied those hands with the task of braiding her hair into a long rope at the side of her head while she pushed back the memory of losing Elias and the hope for love that had died with him. Oh, how she wished that she could, if only for a moment, let go of her vow to cleave only to the memory of her husband and the promise that her marriage had guaranteed love everlasting, children and grandchildren and the dream of always counting on that love until death, that is her death, would finally cease it. But her love had ceased upon hearing the news of her husband’s death and the realization that there would be no children for her, no grandchildren and no love in her future, for her heart could not, would not take the chance of losing love again.

Chapter Seven

Caid watched her from the corners of his eyes, observing her breathtaking beauty while she pretended to ignore the radiating emotion that his closeness was bound to emit. Then, deciding that he should not repeat aloud the words that were screaming inside his head, words that would shock her if not frighten her away from him, words that echoed inside his heart and in his soul, words that would assure her that love did exist beyond the grave and he was right there, a breath away from her and very much willing to ease her pain and fill that gaping hole in her heart, he looked away from her. He stared at the not-so breathtaking bulls ahead of him and cursed her devotion to the man in question.

Then, he leaned his back on the seat and stretched his long leg in front of him. Musing new words to change the subject that his mind had meandered into, Caid reverted to answer her ever-present avowed love for her dead husband with a tiny bit of bitterness in his voice, “We all had our reasons.”

“Did you fight in the war?” Marty asked, craning her head to read his expression but he kept his face forward.

“Sure did,” he said with a nod before he clucked to the bulls, still fighting the urge to insist that she put aside her grief. Then, he shifted on the seat and added, “But, I was fighting for the other side.”

Realizing that she might think that he could have been the one who had made her a widow, he cleared his throat and continued, “But I didn’t join until later, after my brother was killed. I felt it was my duty and honor to take his place. Mother was not happy about it but I knew it had to be done.”

A sudden image of his mother’s anguished face when he had told her that he was going to enlist in the army flashed into his mind. She had just lost her youngest son, the light of her life, and now her first son was leaving her to be either killed or maimed in a war that did not concern him. Yes, he was a Northerner. Yes, he was a landowner, or a descendent of one and a representative of the family in the Union’s fight for freedom of the slaves down south. But his family did not and had never owned slaves and their plight did not concern the McAllister clan, so Mother did not think that either of her sons should forfeit his life for ‘slaves who would not appreciate his sacrifice’ and she had burst into tears and added ‘MY sacrifice!’

He recalled trying to remind her that the Union was mostly fighting to keep the country together, but she would not hear any part of that argument. His brow furrowed while he conjured up the conversation in his mind, but Marty thankfully interrupted it.

“Did she ever forgive you?” Marty asked as if she really did care that this man would have his mother’s love forever, for in her mind, a mother’s love was ever-growing, never-ending and absolutely unconditional.

“Not completely,” he answered, staring off in the distance, relieved that she had found a subject that would alter his amorous mood, but more than a little perturbed that she had picked this one. “And she never got over losing her favorite son.”

“Why do you think he was her favorite?” Marty asked with a perplexed expression on her face.

“Because my father was a gambler who married her for her money and when her mother disinherited her, he left her poor and pregnant. She hated him because of it and I’m sure I was always a reminder of that,” he said with a tilt of his handsome dark head.

Immediately feeling concern for him, Marty laid a hand on his forearm and assured him, “She loved you. A mother always loves her children.”

Caid stared down at that small tender hand, the hand that used to carry the symbol of love everlasting until the war interfered. He wished that it would have been his love that she had lost, for he would invite death for just one moment in her arms, one word of assured love from her and that would have been enough for an eternity of memories for him. Then he raised his gaze and switched his feet on the rail while he switched his mind back to answer her assurance that his mother had, and to concede to his realization that Marty had not, loved him, “I’m sure she loved me, but she loved Caleb more.”

Seeing her shake her head in the negative, he assured her, “Naw, Caleb was the darling in her eyes because she loved his father more than life itself. And when his father passed away, Caleb was all she had. Besides me,” he added almost in a whisper.

“Do you see her often?” Marty asked, trying to change the subject just a bit.

“The last time I saw her was the day I came home from the war,” he answered as if reliving that day in his mind and he welcomed the anger that this recollection ensued in his heart, for it chased away the disappointment at not enjoying the love of the woman next to him. “She’d packed all my things and stored them in the barn and when I came home, she told me where they were and how fast to get them off her property.”

“So she didn’t forgive you!” Marty exclaimed with appalled realization.

“Nope,” he said with a quick shake of his head. “She never forgave me for enlisting, she’d said, and even though she was glad that I was alive, she’d told me she never wanted to know if I was breathing or dead. She said she was done with worrying about me, that it was best that she remembered me just like I left her.”

Then as if a gush of wind had sucked the breath from his lungs, Caid realized that maybe Mother really did love him and that her vile measures were truly warranted. A brief picture of her hardened face that stared at him defiantly demanding that he leave her forever flashed into his mind and he suddenly remembered that in his anger at her, he had stomped away from his mother. But his broken heart had sent him back to crush her weary body to his and to whisper ‘I love you, Mother’ before he had tossed her away from him and stomped out of her life. Now, sitting next to this woman who evoked so much emotion in him, Caid remembered looking back at the broken woman that was his mother and how she crumpled in a heap of despair in the knowledge that he had actually believed her attempt at pushing him away. But his pride had forced him to harden his heart and to ignore that selfless act on her part to spare him further misery. It was not until this moment that he discovered her actual motive for sending him away.

“Oh, my goodness!” Marty exclaimed in shock. “I could never tell my son such a cruel thing.”

“Well, it turns out,” he clarified with a sad look on his face and with an explanation that would exonerate his mother’s actions. “Consumption was killing her and I guess she didn’t want me to watch her die. It was her way, I suppose, of sparing me the heartache of seeing her life drain away from her.”

“Still,” Marty argued. “To tell you that she never wanted to see you again? How sad it must have been for you, to hear such an awful thing from your own mother, the woman who had nurtured you. How could she not assure you that she loved you?”

Touched by her concern and without thinking about how she would take the gesture or how it would look to the others, he enveloped her in his strong arm and squeezed her into his side. With his other hand, he lifted her face toward his and drank in the blue depths of her eyes while he fought the urge to merge his lips into the inviting petals of hers. He eased his face closer to hers and when his heartfelt words echoed upon her lips and returned to his, he beseeched with melancholy, “How can I ever again be assured that someone else loves me?”

Taken aback by his embrace and sudden nearness, Marty drew in a breath and, equally surprised that she had placed her palm upon his chest where love would abide and by her own audible admission, which she had hoped to keep to herself, advice that she knew was also meant for her own observance, she whispered into his lips, “Listen with your heart. It hears the unspoken truth.”

For what seemed like an eternity, they listened together, while their eyes locked in a silent conversation and their hearts spoke volumes of words that were unheard by their ears but consumed by their starving souls. And in that fleeting instant, love was perceived as the sudden yet ceaseless and unyielding constant that supersedes all of life’s afflictions and leaves nothing but affection behind.

But then, as if suddenly realizing that this woman could not, as instantaneously as he had with her, fall in love with him, for she was obviously still captivated by her love for a dead man, he lowered his chin. He could see it in her eyes, eyes that still reflected a deep-down love that he comprehended could not be erased in one moment. Caid moved his head away from her before he said gruffly and haughtily, “Thanks for your concern but I’ve heard all I can stand to hear.”

Wriggling from beneath the arm that he removed without a struggle, Marty gave him a sideways look before she said, “I’m sure you are mistaken—by thinking that your mother hated you. As I said before, a mother loves her children, no matter what they do to disappoint her.”

He looked away from her, wanting her to feel the same agony of an empty heart that he was enduring while impressing upon her the need to fill it with new love and he growled, “A mother’s love is no substitute for true love, something that you seem to be afraid to feel again.”

Marty drew in a breath of indignation before she admonished, “How dare you insinuate that you know anything about my heart and how I chose to preserve the love that I had with my Elias? You know nothing about me. All you know is that I am too hard on my animals.”

Vindictively pleased that he had evoked anger from her and hoping to stoke the fire in her heart just a little bit more, he growled, “I know you don’t have any experience in motherly love either.”

From deep inside her broken heart, the tears gushed to her eyes, filling them with both anger at this man and the agony of losing her babies and the undying knowledge that she would never be a mother, would never be allowed to love a child, much less be disappointed in its actions. Trying desperately to compose herself, she tugged at the knot at the end of her braid and unwound the auburn curls. Then she twisted them into a tighter braid that pulled at her scalp and she welcomed the pain that took the place of the agony that twisted inside her heart while she blared, “How could you know such an intimate thing about me? You had never set eyes on me before you took over my wagon the other day.”

She turned her back to him, covering her eyes with her fingertips and sucking in a breath of growing indignation while she rose to leave him, to climb back into the sanctuary of the wagon bed and to cry her misery into the blankets that her mother had stitched with all the love in her heart.

But Caid’s hand gently pulled her back onto the hard bench of the wagon and held her there while he contemplated the pain that he had inflicted in her. His mind reeled with finding a way to fix the offensive words that had escaped from his mouth.

There was no time to think or react, for Marty turned her face toward him again and her blue eyes swam with both indignation and hurt, a blending of emotions that plunged a tremendous agonizing dagger deep into his chest. And then she uttered the words that would cut deeper than any blade could.

“You have no right to assume anything about me or my past. You’re a stranger who couldn’t care a whit about me. You only saved me from drowning to be a hero to everyone.”

She curled her fisted into her eyes and wept, pulling away when he tried to console her. Then she dropped her hands and let the emotions flow with words that hurt him even more than he had hurt her, “I wish that you had let me die!”

Chapter Eight

Caid’s heart melted. He was a breath away from telling her that he had seen her before and that, in the flash of an instant, he had fallen madly, obsessively in love with her, but instead, he whispered, “Ah, don’t say that!”

Then, he reached for her, clenching his mouth shut and cursing himself for taking the argument too far. It wasn’t her fault that she didn’t feel the same way about him. He should not have punished her for the fact that she still loved her husband by reminding her that she could never be a mother if she would not give her heart away again. Tenderly, with regretful emotions rising into his eyes, he pulled her back into his embrace where he held her, caressed her and whispered soothing words to her.

“I know about the babies,” he whispered into her hair with wavering words. “Greta told me."

Marty pulled from his embrace and uttered as if her sister had committed some unforgivable deed against her, “Why would she?”

Caid shook his head and placed a hand upon hers; enveloping it with his warmth as if that gesture would ease the pain in her heart and he whispered, “Don’t be angry at her. It’s my fault. I asked her so many questions while you slept.”

“Why?” Marty wondered aloud, staring at his face for an answer.

He turned away from her then and stared at the grassy horizon before he sighed and admitted, still watching the waves of lush tendrils, “I wanted to know more about the woman I saved and who saved me in return.”

“H-How could I have saved you?” Marty asked while she blinked away another tear.